Halfords have written to merchants telling them that new products will no longer be approved for listing as the decision has been made to close the Halfords marketplace side of their business.
The expected closure date will be the 11th of April 2018 and up until then orders will be processed as normal although merchants can opt to shoot down sooner.
“We are writing to inform you that, as a result of some recent internal business discussions, the decision has been made to make some changes to our Marketplace platform and we will be terminating the agreement due to closure of the Marketplace.”
– Halfords email to merchants
Merchants trading on Halfords have reported strong sales but some pointed out Halfords restricted the products they could sell based on not competing with Halfords own product range.
It’s hard not to regret Halfords decision as the ability to diversify and spread risk across multiple venues is attractive to merchants but doubtless Halfords have decided a marketplace is not in their own businesses best in interests.
One option that may be open to merchants is to apply to become a Halfords direct supplier of this would work for their business model.
One Response
As a customer of Halfords all the marketplace did was confuse things – go on there to find X tool or Y part and the marketplace sellers flooded out what was actually in stock.